Age of Death (Taennie)

7

Dad tried several times to talk to me, but I stayed shut in my room for the rest of the day, buried beneath the piles of blanket on my bed. I kept my phone on my nightstand, turned on, and spent my evening listening to the buzzes of new messages from Haneul and Jennie.

Dad came by at one point to talk through the door about what had gone wrong today at the arcade rather than what'd happened when I'd gotten home, so it was obvious that Haneul reported back to him rather than letting me off the hook. I was eager to put off dealing with it, so I didn't respond to him.

I cracked first for Haneul, when he called me shortly after midnight. He sighed with relief when i answered him with a dull 'hello'

"I was worried about you," he said.

"I'm ok," i deadpanned. "You can stop calling me."

There was a long silence. At last, he told me, "jennie was really upset."

"I don't care," I mumbled. "I hardly know her."

"Yeah, you do care. You like her."

"I hardly know her." I repeated.

"You still like her." When I didn't argue, he added, treading carefully, "it's okay to like her, you know."

I rolled my eyes. "You're so full of shit. You're the one who told me to stay away from her in the first place."

"That was my advice. It doesn't mean not taking it makes you wrong. I get it, okay? I get it better than anyone. Sometimes your head and your heart don't say the same thing."

"Look, it's not like I'm in love with her. We just met. I can just....tell her I'm not interested. Tell her to leave me alone. I never have to speak to her again, and then when she..." I trailed off, swallowing hard, and couldn't bring myself to say it. Instead, I let out a shaky breath and admitted. "She was going to kiss me."

"I know. I saw. I stopped it." He was silent for a moment. "Maybe I shouldn't have."

I didn't know what to say. I set the phone down on my bedspread and put him on speaker, then placed my chin in my hands. "My dad's seeing someone," i told him.

"I know. She was here when I pulled up."

"How can he do that? He didn't even tell me about her."

"Well, maybe he was worried that this was how you'd react." He seemed to hesitate for a moment before continuing. "It had been four years since your mom, you know?"

"That shouldn't matter."

"Of course it does. People move one, Taehyung. He loved your mom, but i bet she'd want him to be happy."

"You don't know anything about my mom or what she'd want." I bit out, and he fell silent. I rubbed at my face until I was sure my cheeks were red.

"That's true," he said at last, "but that's the way life works. You like Jennie now, but if you were to date her, you'd want to eventually date again after she was dead, wouldn't you?"

"Why do you have to be such an insensitive asshole?" I snapped, cheeks flaming, and then quickly hung up on him. Then I threw my phone across the room and watched it hit the wall with a satisfying smack.

Breathing hard, I lay back down, pulled my covers over my head, and willed myself to wake up to a different world in the morning. One where Haneul wasn't so cynical and straightforward and my dad cared about my mom and Jennie didn't have less than a year to live. But that wasn't going to happen.

I couldn't fall in love with her, I knew, but trying to help her was the only real option I had. I couldn't just ignore her now, and if i couldn't keep her alive, i could atleast he there for her when she died. The last two months of her life being happy ones were more important than anything I'd go through while helping make them happy. That was the right thing to do, even if it would be hard.